Jun 14: write a short story titled keyboard blues
….
A blank white page stares back at me from the screen in front of me. The screen and I are having an intense staring contest and quite sadly, the screen is winning. It's so frustrating. Like how do you transfer a feeling, a concept, perfectly to paper. The feared blank page is frightening, but an imperfect story is even worse.
You cannot fuck it up, readers are waiting for you, they expect a certain degree of poetry, of creativity and all I can do is stare at a screen and dread it.
“Start with once upon a time,” Aubrey says from my side and I blink in slight surprise and then give her a pointed look.
“Oh my why didn't I think of that Shakespeare?”
She chuckles and leans back on her chair.
“This…” she says and waves her hand vaguely at the screen, “is a very interesting and nerve-wracking stage in writing. You know what to write but you just don't know how to begin. I think the best way to break out of this is by writing anything that comes to your mind. Just anything, any word, and the rest will flow…hopefully.”
I give her a half grateful, half annoyed smile and focus on the screen of my laptop. My fingers touch the keyboard and I take a deep breath.
“It's not that serious, Erin, calm down.”
Chapter 10
The back door creaks open and a man moves through it in the dark–
“Should I say dark because we can't really see the colour cuz it's like in a shadow…” I mummur to myself and begin to bite my nails.
“Or I think I'll just say a silhouette walked through the door…but how do we know it's a man? We need to know it's a man in this first part…ughh!”
“Erin, just write it like that.”
“But it won't be exactly how it's supposed to be! It will sound awkward…”
“That's fine! You'll change the wording later. Just keep writing the things that need to be written. Don't edit now.”
I sigh and focus on the screen.
…Moves through it through the dark and crawls into the kitchen. He hears some sounds coming from the other room and smiles to himself. The glint of a knife on the kitchen counter catches his eye and he turns quickly to-
I tilt my head from side to side, thinking of how to continue the sentence.
I slump back in my chair and fold my arms.
“God…it sounds so dum.”
“What? Er come on it's brilliant! It sounds so creepy.”
“I dunno…I'm starting something that people will be hoping leads to something that makes sense but I don't think I can write that.” I shrugged.
Aubrey stared at me annoyed first but then her expression morphed into sympathy.
“What exactly is the problem? I'm here to help you okay?”
I took a deep breath. “I don't think the writing is or will be great. It's not amazing or exceptional, it's just meh. I'm not great at it!!”
“Er, you don't need your work to be perfect. At least not now. Just let go of all these things you're thinking about and write! The amazing books you see, you'll be surprised reading their first draft. Yours might've been so much better than theirs. And your writing is amazing and exceptional.”
I gave her a small smile and sighed.
“Alright.”
I resumed writing and in about thirty minutes, I took a break and leaned back on the chair. I reached over for my phone.
Ten minutes past midnight.
“Ugh, I never have enough time! I've already stayed up until midnight, I can't keep going or I'll regret it.” I sigh and shut my laptop down.
***
The next day I'm at the same spot at night after a stressful day of work. My laptop is open in front of me but I'm not paying it any attention.
My eyes are glued to my phone screen. I'm currently on YouTube watching reels.
I really need to write. I don't even have enough time. Unfortunately, the world of YouTube had sucked me in and five minutes turned to an hour and before you know it, I had half an hour left till I had to go to bed.
I sigh when I look at the time and back at my laptop. Currently, at this part of the chapter, I'm supposed to be writing about something relating to world war two.
I have no idea what to write because I know practically nothing about the topic. And the thought of reading about it is scary because it'll be so damn long.
I can't write about the war if I don't have sufficient knowledge so I give up writing. People will say so much about how I dunno what I'm writing and I'm not ready for negative feedback.
Aubrey isn't here today but that's fine. I couldn't even do anything.
I dunno if I could tomorrow as well. I feel I'm in a state where I just can't possibly make the words in need come out of my head and it's frustrating.
I hope I come out of it soon.
---
I'm sleeping lateee, cuz I'm a writerrr
